Performance artist arms herself for battle

Elia Arce's anti-war piece deals with fear and killing

Published 5:30 am, Friday, June 17, 2005

To create The Fifth Commandment, Los Angeles-based performance artist Elia Arce interviewed veterans, their families and military workers about their attitudes toward killing.

When Arce debuted the show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, it included soldiers' monologues about growing up and joining the military, a funeral scene, graphic war footage and music. That performance began slowly, establishing the experiences of soldiers before ramping up to show the drama of war and its effects, including civilian and military deaths.

Since then, said Sixto Wagan, DiverseWorks performing arts director, Arce has strengthened and added to the piece — and has added material gathered in Houston. Backed by video footage from the Iraq war and other images, former Marine Cameron St. John performs the show with Arce, along with audience recruits.

"It's an anti-war piece," Arce said Thursday. But it didn't start out that way. "I was trying for it to be a little bit more — what should I say? — objective."

"That's just where I stand," she added. "The main thing for me is that I am not against the soldiers."

For her performances, she chooses topics that frighten her. As a child in Costa Rica in the late 1970s and early '80s, Arce said she was scared of the U.S. military. (Arce holds dual citizenship in the United States and Costa Rica.)

In the late 1990s, she focused her work on rising HIV/AIDS rates among immigrant Latinas during a residency in Houston. She also has worked with breast cancer workers in Washington and the homeless in Los Angeles' Skid Row.

She said she's learned a great deal from putting this show together.

"The knowledge that I have now about the young people who are going in and the reasons why they are going in — it just completely changed my perspective," she said.

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Fifth Commandment will head to San Antonio next weekend, Wagan said. Los Angeles performances are planned for later this year.